Leftism

Extremism and the Democratic Party

August 1, 2011August 1, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Democrats Extreme Communists Radicals by James M. Thunder –
Democratic leaders and liberal commentators declaim against the Tea Party members of the Republican House and Grover Norquist for the no-new-taxes pledge to which many Republican Senators and House members have subscribed and have promised their constituents in return for their vote. They are lambasted for their “extremism” in the debt ceiling debate. How convenient for the Democrats to be able to point to specific targets of their wrath.

Would that conservatives and Republicans could point to a particular group of Democrats or a particular pledge Democrats take as evidence of their extremism. The reason conservatives and Republicans cannot point to such a group or pledge is because extremism on the Left infects the entire Democratic Party. [Read more…]

America: Time to Start Over

July 30, 2011July 30, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Liberty Crying America Crumbling by Matt Patterson –
This must have been what it was like living in the 1930s: politicians running around, fingers in their ears, unwilling or unable to confront a rising conflagration that they helped to light.

Back then, the threat came from a revivified and revanchist Germany. Western leaders stood by while the Germans rearmed, then looked the other way as ever larger chunks of the Continent fell to the blitzkrieg. When the enervated Western elites finally took a stand over Poland, it was too late — the fire was so large that, by the time it was finally quenched, the world lay in smoldering ruin.

Today we face a different, though no less mortal, sort of threat: the wealth of the West has been revealed to be largely illusory, built on the foolish foundations of credit that shift and scatter like sands in the wind. [Read more…]

Food Totalitarians on Parade

July 27, 2011July 28, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Food Totalitarians Food Police by Chuck Roger –
Within the last few years, we have been treated to attempts by government to control our food intake with regulatory “nudges” and legislative edicts. Sugar, salt, trans-fats, fats in general, fast foods, and school lunches are just a few ingredients and food types which have come under assault by sanctimonious busybodies seeking to dictate “healthy” eating to everyone.

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman provides the latest in we-know-what’s-best-for-you babble. In a Times op-ed, Bittman complains, “WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits?”

The question itself makes a fundamentally flawed assumption and exhibits arrogance. Why is it anyone’s job to “get Americans to change [their] eating habits?” By posing the question in the first place, Bittman implicitly considers himself to be among a select minority tasked with providing guidance to the majority. [Read more…]

A Fling with the Welfare State

July 25, 2011July 26, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Welfare State Democrats Obama by Noemie Emery –
From the best of intentions to bankruptcy and recriminations

The intentions of Democrats are only the best. They want all of the old to have lavish retirements, all of the young to have scholarships, verse-penning cowboys to have festivals funded by government, and everyone to have access to all the best health care, at no cost to himself. In the face of a huge wave of debt swamping all western nations, this is the core of their argument: They want a fair society, and their critics do not; they want to help, and their opponents like to see people suffer; they want a world filled with love and caring, and their opponents want one of callous indifference, in which the helpless must fend for themselves. (“We must reject both extremes, those who say we shouldn’t help the old and the sick and those who say that we should,” quips the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg.) But in fact, everyone thinks that we “should” do this; the problem, in the face of the debt crisis, is finding a way that we can. It is about the “can” part that the left is now in denial: daintily picking its way through canaries six deep on the floor of the coal mine, and conflating a “good” with a “right.” [Read more…]

Obama Redefining ‘Poverty’

July 20, 2011July 22, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by David Paulin –
What does it mean to be poor in America today? For typical “poor” households — as defined by the government — it means cable television, two color television sets, and two or more cars.

As for housing, it means living in air-conditioned comfort — in decent accommodations with even more space than “average” Europeans have. (Not poor Europeans, to be sure, but “average” Europeans.) Moreover, most “poor” Americans get the medical care they need, and they eat enough — in fact, they eat too much. [Read more…]

Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society’s Moral Character

July 19, 2011July 20, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Dennis Prager –

While liberals are certain about the moral superiority of liberal policies, the truth is that those policies actually diminish a society’s moral character. Many individual liberals are fine people, but the policies they advocate tend to make a people worse. Here are 10 reasons:

1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.

The greatest description of American civilization was written in the early 19th century by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. One of the differences distinguishing Americans from Europeans that he most marveled at was how much Americans — through myriad associations — took care of one another. Until President Franklin Roosevelt began the seemingly inexorable movement of America toward the European welfare state — vastly expanded later by other Democratic presidents — Americans took responsibility for one another and for themselves far more than they do today. Churches, Rotary Clubs, free-loan societies and other voluntary associations were ubiquitous. As the state grew, however, all these associations declined. In Western Europe, they have virtually all disappeared. [Read more…]

Time For Once Upon A Time In America

July 17, 2011July 17, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Obama Fraud Liar Fairy Tales by Richard F. Miniter –
For many years now America has been profoundly altering its culture, reordering its economy, and shedding individual liberties in response to inventive short stories told by liberal left-wing theorists. Yet, whenever one of these stories turns out to be a fairytale, as they all invariably do, we rarely back up and repair the damage.

In part because the practical result of any one fairy tale takes a while to fall to earth and poison the drinking water and by the time it does our attention has long since been focused on marshalling the facts in the debate about some new law, regulation, ordinance, code, or international agreement demanded by those who believe the next fairy tale. Or say they do.

And as often as not, we lose because we tend to ignore the fact that the real power, in this ongoing struggle between individual freedom and those who fear and revile it lies not in the facts of the matter, but with the other foot in this two step dance: the story. [Read more…]

Conservative Heretics

July 11, 2011July 12, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Road to Socialism Obama by William Sullivan –
Chris Matthews recently crowed that Republicans and Tea Party conservatives are bringing about the end of days, “economic Armageddon,” by their stubborn faith in the “religion of no taxes.”

If you haven’t already, take a moment to savor the delightful hilarity of Chris Matthews lambasting conservatives as the blind acolytes of fear-mongers in the very moment that he plays “harbinger of fiscal doom” for the Obama administration. But his idiocy offers revelation. As he sits in his pulpit working tirelessly to convince America that Republicans are ready to chug the Kool-Aid by not giving in to tax hikes, it becomes apparent that the exact opposite of his claim is true.

Modern progressivism, as a construct, is a church — one whose practice is reminiscent of the Dark Ages and one that can truly be called an “opiate of the masses.” It comes complete with sin-tax collectors who seek to extract more wealth as you more excessively engage in the sin of success. [Read more…]

How to Destroy a Culture in 5 Easy Steps

July 5, 2011July 8, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Joe Carter (First Things) –

In his book The Future of Marriage, David Blankenhorn, a liberal, gay-rights-supporting Democrat and self-professed “marriage nut,” offers this sociological principle: “People who professionally dislike marriage almost always favor gay marriage.” As a corollary, Blankenhorn adds: “Ideas that have long been used to attack marriage are now commonly used to support same-sex marriage.”

Blankenhorn provides almost irrefutable proof that this is the expressed agenda of many—if not most—professional advocates of same-sex marriage. Other scholars have noticed the same and have attempted to present the public with the facts about the less-than-hidden agenda to use homosexual rights to deinstitutionalize marriage and to separate sexual exclusivity from the concept of “monogamy.”

Since the agenda is an open secret, how has this anti-marriage program been able to advance to the level of public policy? And how did it happen so quickly? [Read more…]

American Leftism: An Infantile Disorder

June 30, 2011July 4, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

American Leftists Cry Baby Democrats by Victor Volsky –
In his fascinating essay “The Metaphysics of Contemporary Theft” describing the rising tide of parasitism engulfing the U.S., Victor Davis Hanson suggests that the Obama Administration only pretends to want to destroy the American way of life so as not to deprive itself of its source of sustenance:

Its real goal is a sort of parasitism that assumes the survivability of the enfeebled host. That does not mean it has not done a lot of damage and will not do even more in the next two years; only that it never quite wanted to see cap and trade legislation enacted, blanket amnesty, Guantanamo shut down, or Predators ended; these were simply crude slurs by which to demonize Bush, ways of acquiring power and influence, but not a workable plan of living. Note that Obama is now zealous on just those issues which he could have easily rammed through his Democratically controlled congress in 2009-10 when he had large majorities, such as amnesty and cap and trade

[Read more…]